Systems Thinking For Those With An Unsound Mind

The performance of the whole is never the sum of the performance of the parts taken separately; it’s the product of their interactions. (…) Improving the performance of one component of a system will rarely improve the performance of the whole system. In fact, it can frequently harm it.

Dr. Russell Ackoff

Insight #3 — success is measured subjectively by the number of happy customers our business system creates. A happy customer is someone who is left significantly better off from using your product or service.

Insight #2 — awareness, engagement, and conversion are all necessary, but none of them individually is sufficient to produce the results we want on their own. All three must be present for our business system to be successful.

Insight #1 — businesses are systems from which results emerge from the relationships among the essential parts.